Expanded schools, larger schools, more students per school and more K-8 schools are among ways the St. Johns County School District will cope with ongoing student population growth.

The policy change comes as the district faces continued growth and dwindling funds for construction. It’s spurred by a renewed interest from developers in building homes, including some developments of regional impact in St. Johns County.

“It’s all about growth,” summed up Tim Forson, deputy superintendent for operations.

District officials made the case for change during a recent School Board workshop.

Superintendent Joe Joyner, who came from a South Florida district and saw the problems caused by extremely rapid growth, said it “was like a tsunami” there and decisions on growth were “solely built on that.”

St. Johns County has time to deal with growth issues, he said.

“When you see a school district get run over, that’s why it’s important. We can look ahead at our future; we can be thoughtful about it,” said Joyner. “We’re in a good spot ... right now. It’s not going to be that way forever.”

It has been district policy to go with smaller schools that serve smaller student populations. But that was in good economic times when Florida school districts had more financial options.

Allowing larger school populations is a shift in philosophy, an area that district School Board members must approve. Members Bill Fehling, Bev Slough and Patrick Canan signaled they could accept the change but with some modification. They didn’t, for instance, want to see only K-8 schools. That, said both Slough and Fehling, should be an option but they didn’t want it to be the only option considered.

Chairman Bill Mignon had to leave during the meeting, and member Tommy Allen could not be there. Fehling said he could sum up their stands: Mignon would be for K-8 schools, and Allen will want to keep smaller schools.

Still growing

St. Johns County has been unique when it came to growth during the recession. While about four-fifths of the state’s 67 school districts either saw no student population growth or lost students, St. Johns County continued to grow.

Under construction are two K-8 schools to serve growth areas — one in northeastern St. Johns County and the other in the county’s northwest. The schools combine elementary and middle schools.

Now, the district is facing more growth.

“Things slowed down for three or four years from the developer/project standpoint,” Forson said. “Now it’s picking back up rapidly.”

Nicole Cubbedge, who handles facilities and planning growth for the district, deals with developers. During the recession, projects have changed; in some cases, owners are changing and state funds once available to enhance developments are no longer there, she said.

All of that affects school development, and district officials are looking for ways to cope with the new realities.

Five schools, including the two K-8s under construction, are needed over the next five years, according to facilities planning projections required by the state. In 10 years, another nine schools are projected and, by 2032-33, eight more schools.

That comes to 22 schools to be built over 20 years.

Currently, the district has about 32,000 students. By 2032-33 that number is projected to be 50,741.

In order to build schools, districts must show the need to the state.

Schools can’t be built unless the bodies are on hand and that means districts often find the schools are at capacity when they open.

The challenge of funding growth

While things have changed for developers, they’ve also changed for school districts, especially when it comes to funding for building.

Capital funds are limited, pointed out Mike Degutis, who oversees the district’s finances. PECO, or Public Education Capital Outlay, funds, the money once allocated by the state for building, no longer go to public schools, but to charter schools. Thanks to local state legislators, the district did qualify for $6 million this year, because it met the requirements for PECO high growth funds. Impact fees for new construction can only be used for new students; school concurrency/mitigation funding is more restricted than in the past and COPS, or certificates of participation capacity, which affect bonding, are nearly tapped out because of paying for current buildings.

Another funding hindrance is the reduction in capital outlay millage. For years, that stood at 2 mills. Then, legislators reduced it to 1.75 and then to 1.5 mills, with the difference going into other portions of the school budget. A drop in property values also adversely affected millage. Capital outlay is used for building projects.

Degutis noted an increase back to the 2 mills would help bonding capacity.

New approaches to address the issue

All of the issues have led the district to seek new ways to approach providing needed facilities.

Research into the effect of student body size on academic achievement varies, but Forson said studies show very little difference is seen in academic outcome over time in more affluent settings. Many areas of the district fall into that category.

Board members and district staff talked about the need to maintain academic excellence in all schools.

“I defer to educators to tell me when the number is too big,” Canan, the newest board member, said.

“Who knows what’s going to happen?” Canan said of growth, adding that flexibility would help the district cope.

Forson noted that more compact schools have been built, doing away with wasted space. Second stories are included in the design of several of the newer schools. That is one way existing schools can be expanded, as opposed to building new schools.

That expansion would mean more students in schools. Elementary schools will stay near the current 700 or 1,000, based on need and density. K-8 schools, currently at a capacity of 1,009, will go to the 1,400 to 1,500 range. High schools will go for 1,460 capacity to 2,100.

There are limits, however.

When specific numbers for school size were discussed, Slough said she didn’t want to see “creep” in numbers making the schools bigger than the board agreed on.

More K-8 schools did raise some flags with board members, who wanted to be sure older students would be able to get the more advanced and diversified courses offered at middle schools.

District officials said with K-8 schools there was less transition for students, and schools became true centers of the community. Because there is one school instead of two, there is less duplication of services and structures. Cost reductions come in transportation, maintenance and energy efficiency.

Joyner said the changes proposed “won’t solve the problem” but can help the district cope.

“We’ve talked about this a lot. It will put us in a better place,” Joyner said.

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I am a big fan of the St. Johns k12 Public Schools so I offer the following comments about future growth in the spirit of policy suggestions for the school aged child portion of population.

We begin by acknowledging St. Johns schools are special in the state in that annual achievement scores have scored this jurisdiction #1 among all Florida k12 districts the last three years and St. Johns has never been out of the Top Ten districts since the first standard, state-wide test was given in l998.
But my bias about the test, Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (hereafter FCAT), going to a 2.0 version this year, is a more documentation of methodological disaster in standard test construction and historical development of annual test results did little to effectively evaluate Florida children 'learning progress' or 'achievement' this past decade and a half.

Instead, test results provided fodder to create a Grade A through Grade F system of describing school buildings and districts in the name of 'public awareness and accountability.' For a top ranked district like St. Johns its Grade A and B schools are a priority argument of developers and publicists whose mantra is 'growth is good' and 'we will grow 40% population in the next twenty five years." Superintendent Joyner remembers central Florida and hints that future St. Johns teeters on the same public policy mania where educational decisions were made 'solely on growth.'
~~~
I would suggest that the School board and professional Staff basking in glow of attractiveness due to FCAT performance results
(e.g., combining the mega developments like Nocatee with 'sag south' of school aged refugees from Duval and Clay) have a parallel responsibility to note the downside dangers of out of control growing of student numbers. There has been public notice that a system pushing at its seams will continue the pace of building a school a year (or more) and that classroom enrollments will continue to expand, but I do not believe the average taxpaying citizen or parent of school aged children appreciates how close to a default edge St. Johns is already being shoved to. The article notes that capital construction of schools depends on Public Education Capital Outlay (hereafter PECO) funds and a state contributed portion but the impact is more than a state legislature promoting a political drama of 'charter' schools to replace conventional public schools. Look at almost any existing St. Johns school and note the proportion of classrooms in portable and temporary structures due to past capital construction dilemmas.

In other words, the issues of managing buildings and classroom spaces is more than a tidal wave of new buildings; it is the past obligations and debts incurred for retrofitting and preventative maintenance of current structures being stretched into longer use patents. Add to this the bonding capability of the school system. Yes, the state is hindering all local school governments by cutting back the millage rate to 1.5% but, even in a fairly rich district like St. Johns, the housing market and tax base is only starting to reestablish and bonding for all capital needs. St. Johns has bonding obligations for previous loans going back to the early l990's and, regardless of how many times they have been restructured, that remains existing obligation.

A third feature to describe the growing danger to present k12 program and schooling effectiveness is use of emergency or crisis solutions to issues of growth. I am not sure the article emphasized enough that 4/5th of all Florida districts are not adding children and that St. Johns had to receive an exception $6million one shot allocation for last year. And that leads to looking at actual building of new schools in Palencia and in Nocatee. Few people will argue that these fast growing new suburban neighborhoods needed new school buildings but both represent forms of 'grease the squeaky wheel' priority. Palencia was not the most critical need for the 2008 school board calculation of needed schools to 2020. Yet five years later the elementary school is operational there. Recently, the St. Augustine Record described the 'gift' that Nocatee developers gave St. Johns to build a school in their development. But the reality was that Nocatee simply moved fiscal obligations of their approval up from Phase 3 and 4 to allow the 2013 construction.

I would argue that deviating from a school plan for the next twenty years to either satisfy an unexpected 'burst' of new residential homes and concentration of new children gives into a sprawl type population growth. I would argue that 'borrowing forward' on multi-phase mega developer obligations ( if Nocatee, why not Silverleaf, Aberdeen, Rivertown?) is simply a load-shedding slight of hand that passes an even more dangerous condition into the future. Certainly, the citizens of Nocatee who know that their entire build out towards a mini-city of 38.000+ folks and nine new schools should consider that the 2014 elementary school addition is more than about lower fire insurance rates.
~~~
What all of these indicators are is a portrait of an already stretched and dangerously fragile fiscal k12 public school system. All the FCAT Grade A accolades do not mitigate the present grasp of overgrowing school year population and the threat to both academic performance and tax base capabilities. To look at the school board's own projections of inevitable continued growth to 2035 and over 50,000+ students in St. Johns is a dooms day scenario. But what can the school educators do to influence something as pervasive as growth?

One concrete suggestion is simply (and formally) say NO on every project approval process that the County or incorporated City governments use to evaluate new developments, especially mega DRIs or 'urban infills' in the NW of the county. For example, when Development Services in the county prepares a project to be evaluated by Planning & Zoning for recommendation and then the Commission for approval, the St. Johns schools must specify whether they have the capacity to include the projected new students. To date. the public k12 schools have always played 'good soldier' saying that new students might not be in the immediate 'neighborhood' but can be absorbed somewhere in the county. The schools could declare a moratorium on any new children in developments to be approved.

Further, every one of the big mega development approvals between 2000-2007 have been changed dramatically as they go into phase one or two operation. The residential home numbers have been changed drastically and I would think that the k12 School system could argue that any formal recommendation for accommodation given in the past should be formally reconsidered and reevaluated. Instead of trading fiscal obligations to build new schools early, how about relooking lofty pipe dreams passed in a frenzy period and get some rescaled calculation of future student growth within major approved projects? The results may change the current school system projection of capital and program needs in 2025 and 2035 by a lot.
~~~
Yes, I admit the education system playing hard ball against the future growth is good mania and 'jobs creation' logic is not going to be fun. But the option is being overwhelmed by the growth tidal wave and repeating south and central Florida sprawl experience.
And I would conclude by arguing that the schools saying no new students possible will be echoed by every other public service operation along the entire spectrum of vital services. Do you think that the fire service or the sheriff has an unlimited capability to continually expand services and grow? Do you really think that doubling up for larger class sizes and building a new school a year provides stability or a policy solution? The pragmatic reality of St. Johns jurisdiction in 2014 is one of finite resources and looming scarcity ( parallel with potable water and consumptive water permits) where dramatic actions to mitigate uncontrolled/out of control growing are necessary now. It takes a kind of leadership and courage that is more than pointing proudly to the years of FCAT Grade A performances or sad sigh nostalgia for a simpler,
less urbanized time.